Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

Philosophy
January 11, 2002

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Basics


1. Man is naturally good, but becomes corrupted by society.

2. Human nature is best prior to and apart from social institutions: that people are naturally loving, virtuous, and selfless; and that it is society, with its artificial rules and conventions, that makes them envious, hypocritical, and competitive. See, The Social Contract. (thus, he rejected the concept of Original Sin and Christian Morality.)

3. He rejected anything that limited the freedom of the inner self. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” He called for freedom from the chain of institutions, rules, customs, and traditions.

4. The revolution is between the society and the state. Between family, church, class, and local community, versus the all-powerful State as savior!

5. Each person should be completely independent from his fellow man, and fully dependent on the state.

6. Since human nature is undefined, there are no moral principles limiting the state’s ambitions. The State need not treat its citizens justly or unjustly, but as it sees the situation at the moment. There are no moral limitations on the State’s use of power. In other words, moral relativism.

7. This philosophy then, advocates the complete overthrow of existing society and its total destruction in order to build a new society from scratch. Thus also invoking the idea of justifying present actions by the future goals of building a perfect society( but which can never happen in the real world as example after example proves.).

8. He believed that one should throw off the constraints of society and explore your inner self, your natural, spontaneous self. ( he was a Bohemian, and had many mistresses, before settling down with Therese, with whom he had 5 bastard children.)

9. Responsibility for rearing and educating children should be taken away from parents and be given to the State. (his five children were left on the doorstep of the local orphanage, since he was not willing to be a parent. Most babies left in this orphanage died soon after entering, which was known to Rousseau.)

10.He believed in conformance to the General Will – merger of individual wills into a grand sum will. The people who rejected the General Will must be forced to be free.

11.These ideas sparked the Reign of Terror in France headed by Robespierre, and the imprisonment of 300,000 nobles, priests and political dissidents, and the deaths of 17,000 citizens in a year.

12. The same pattern was adopted by Marx , Lenin, And Stalin, where the General Will was replaced by the State.

13. Such a philosophy leads directly to tyranny, as we have seen.


It is amazing to me that there are still people who sign up to this barbaric philosophy and advocate its tenets for the US!

# posted by Mannning @ 4:03 PM